David R Roberts

David R Roberts worked for many years as a lecturer in further and higher education, working mainly with adult students accessing university courses in the humanities and social sciences.  He has also written and edited several best-selling textbooks and is a member of the Society of Authors.  A social historian, his more recent books include A Rural Revolution: The History of a Staffordshire Family and Their Village and The Flying Erk: The WW2 Love Letters and Diaries of a Stafford Airman. 

David says, "Retiring from a full-time career in education freed me to write the type of social history that really interests me: how the lives of ordinary people both reflect and make the society in which they live.  It's where biography and history meet.  Using  material from one's own life runs the risk of taking yourself too seriously.  So when writing Slate Days... I wanted to use humour, the surest way to puncture pomposity, to set the tone of the book.  Whether or not I've succeeded, I've found it truly liberating to try."